


Learning How To See

by AndAri



Category: Homestuck
Genre: Blindness, Body Swap, Colors, F/M, Flush Crush, Genderswap, Homestuck - Freeform, Karezi, Maybe more - Freeform, Trolls, also the davekat tag is just bros, appleberry blast, blind, body switch, cherry red, colorful things, i guess, idrk, im not god at tags, is that even tag, maybe later - Freeform, no paleness there, pale mostly, should be months updates, smelling colors, so much blindness, technically, there will be some suggested flushed feelings, things, uh
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2016-03-22
Updated: 2016-03-22
Packaged: 2018-05-28 08:02:01
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,660
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/6321469
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/AndAri/pseuds/AndAri
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>You again felt an urge to go back to the machine—and as stupid as past you is, you did go back to the machine, sat on it even. You discovered that attached to it were two little platforms, and you each sat down on one, ate your disgustingly un-healthy cereal, and passed out. You think maybe you two were talking about how you would never play Mario Kart ever again.<br/>-<br/><b> You know what? <i> Fuck </i> past you and not seeing what was coming, the idiot was blind, no pun intended.</b><br/>-<br/>A story in which Karkat learns the hard way not to press random buttons in the ecto lab anymore. Also in which Karkat learns appreciation for what Terezi goes through when he has to learn to see the world through her eyes. Literally.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Learning How To See

**Author's Note:**

> This chapter will look short! I know! It's just a test chapter to see what kind of feedback I get! I'm thinking of posting a THIRD homestuck fic that is WAY less developed but WAY longer here too! But let's see how LHTS and Joan do first, shall we?
> 
> If you see any mistakes, please point them out to me in the comments!
> 
> Enjoy!

You mashed the classic Nintendo Gamecube controller with frustration as Terezi beat you again.

“Calm down Karkles!” she snickered, “It’s only Mario Kart!”

“YEAH!” you said in your almost-always yelling voice, “But you ALWAYS win!”, you said as you started pacing the room for no reason in particular, it’s not like this actually bothered you that much, but you always seemed to act like everything always did. You heard her sigh.

“Karkles it’s just a game!” You could hear slight frustration and playful teasing in her low-pitch, cracky voice, “C’mon lets go alchemize some food or something, i’m getting hungry.”

You went along with it, and how seeing how it was three in the morning and you didn’t want to wake anyone up, you assisted the blind Terezi out of her room with you down the endless hallways of the lab to try and find an alchemiter. 

You obviously couldn’t use the usual one, seeing how Sollux is working on that one—at all hours of the day and night, he’s playing with it’s wires and codes—and you didn’t want to hear all his crap later, teasing and asking what you were doing with Terezi this late. It was always dark on this asteroid, especially at night. But unlike the humans, trolls are nocturnal, meaning trolls have adapted to see in the dark of the night. There, of course, was one exception, Terezi Pyrope. She has claimed multiple times that the ‘smells’ she ‘sees’ with fade out at night—not so much that she couldn’t see, but if the air was murky enough, she’d trip a couple times. Dragging Terezi around was hard enough, but now that you had to find an alchemiter? Hah! You didn’t even bother looking at those things—you only did when you had to make food or other things for yourself, and you didn’t exactly get needy often. But now you were getting hungry too. 

You peeped into every room you passed until you got tired and just entered one with a bunch of machines, “Hopefully one of these is an alchemiter…” you found yourself mumbling frustratedly. You also found yourself getting tired, after all it was 3AM and the little outbursts you had over Terezi constantly beating you at Mario Kart got the last of your energy. After checking over a couple of machines with Terezi tailing behind you, you got tired of her tripping over things and set her down to sit on the ledge of a panel on a machine. While you were setting her down, she—inevitably—hit some buttons with her thighs. And the machine caught your attention as it light up. The big monitor Terezi was leaning on light up shortly after the control panel, and seemed to be written in a language you couldn't read. Maybe one of the human languages? You highly doubt it though. It obviously wasn't Alternian, or any fancy troll writing, you at least knew what your race’s multiple writing types _looked_ like, no matter how bad the others thought you were at reading and writing (you didn't have much exposure to the things on Alternia, seeing as there was just a computer to type on, why learn to write?). You looked up at the machine’s monitor in awe, it was the kind of thing you wished you could code, maybe Sollux could have a field trip with this later—wait no bad idea. He would just ask how you found it and when you told him, then the crap about you and Terezi would come. So you decided against showing Sollux—but you were pulled out of your train of thought when a certain blind girl asked you a question, feeling the control panel she was sitting on,

“Karkles? Is this humming because its on? Oh! Did you find an alchemiter?” She asked the last question with a bit of hope in her voice, but you both knew very well that the altimeters did not hum. Not as loud as this one anyways. You watched Terezi as she hopped off the control panel coated with buttons, and started running her hands over them. You looked back at the monitor, trying to decipher what it read, ignoring Terezi. You almost asked her if she could maybe… dunno maybe smell the screen? To see if maybe she could read it, and you couldn't just because of your lower education, see back on Alternia, because you didn't make your blood color public, they gave you the lower education, as if you had lower blood. Anyways, you were spacing out again, loosing track of though, you could tell because Terezi was mashing buttons and you hadn’t realized it.

_“TEREZI!”_ You yelled, probably louder than you should have, considering that there were humans and trolls sleeping in this lab. “Don’t do that…!” You were about to say as you reached for her hands, to pull them away from the controls, but she beat you to it. She had opened some sort of panel on the machine and pricked herself with a sharp needle-like point that was sticking out of it. You watched as she smelled her finger for blood—she couldn't see it beading up on the tip of her finger—and then stuck her finger in her mouth, chuckling,

“No need to worry about me Karkels, I only pricked myself! I’m fine~!” She chuckles once more before waving you away as she only sniffed—and occasionally licked—the machine’s control panel trying to read the print on it. 

You almost sighed with relief when she shrugged and stated, “I have no idea what this says, its not Human English and its not any Alternian form of writing I know… You?”. You could almost tell that she was only asking to be polite and was guessing your answer, and probably guessing correctly at that, 

“I have no clue what this cluster-fuck of shapes and maybe some sort of letters means, I was kind of hoping you might.” that last part you didn’t say too loud, “Maybe its some sort of human code?” You then listed some of which you knew of, none of which you actually could read, much less identify. 

Terezi sighed, as did you. She then went around sniffing and tripping over things, clearly too impatient for this thing, as you continued looking at this machine. You had no idea why it grasped your attention with such strong force, but you somehow had an idea that this machine and and would do something. Something important. You weren’t sure what, but you knew something about this machine was enough to keep your attention for so long. 

_You ended up being a hypocrite._

_You ended up mashing some buttons._

You looked up to the monitor once more, almost giving up on the importance of the machine, when you once again took note of the change of the screen that occurred when Terezi had pricked herself. The displayed had changed from what had seemed to resemble instructions to what looked like a chart. When Terezi had pricked herself and couple seconds after she had walked away, the needle had gone back into the machine. A few seconds after that what appeared to be another one, or perhaps the same one, popped back out. When that had happened, on the monitor, a bar on the chart had filled up, but there was another yet to have done this. Looking back on it now, you know you shouldn't have done what you did next—it would have prevented a lot of trouble, past you was stupid—but you ended up pricking yourself by accident on the needle. You quickly stuck your finger in your mouth to hide its disgusting color from anyone’s point of view. Or smell. By doing this you accidentally leaned on a button, and the whole machine made a loud buzzing noise and then partial shut off. The faint glow of the buttons dissapeared. They all retracted into the machine, as the monitor filled up the remaining bar on the chart. The screen switched again, to what looked like a kind of loading screen on it. There seemed to be two ‘loading bars’, one on top of another. The top one was going from left to right, and the bottom from right to left, not that this made any sense to you, or mattered at all. They had both started loading, but were moving at a rate so slow, only a little piece was showing for each, and one could not see—nor smell—the bars filling up. 

You made sure to mutter a small “Shit…?” to yourself before retrieving Terezi, concluding that this machine was of no use to you. And proceeding to actually trying to find an alchemiter. This was also partially influenced by Terezi calling for you, complaining she was hungry and your digestive pouch whinging in agreement with her.

You ended up actually finding one after not so long of a search, and not too many minutes of having to constantly tell Terezi that there was a wire here or a wire there. When you found it, you ended up alchemizing some of that crappy sugar-loaded cereal—‘cinnamon sugar cubes’ you think the humans called them—your average cereal bits but they were coated with cinnamon and sugar and shaped like cubes. One thing for sure, human wriggler breakfast food is not healthy. You again felt an urge to go back to the machine—and as stupid as past you is, you did go back to the machine, sat on it even. You discovered that attached to it were two little platforms, and you each sat down on one, ate your disgustingly un-healthy cereal, and passed out. You think maybe you two were talking about how you would never play Mario Kart ever again.

——————————————————————  
**You know what? _Fuck_ past you and not seeing what was coming, the idiot was blind, no pun intended.**

**Author's Note:**

> Fix update schedule (mostly accurate):
> 
> Learning How To See (LHTS) (this fic): Once a month  
> Joan (My first fic): Once a month
> 
> My in progress fic, most likely to be titled "Homestuck Family" or "My Homestuck Family" (depending on wether or not I find myself good at writing self-inserts) should be up in maybe 2-3 months, depending on when finals decide to arrive and how hard school work is! Keep in mind I have a lot of planing still to do on this fic. A LOT.


End file.
